There is a good chance your employer has some form of “Environmental Awareness” certification. They are probably pretty proud of themselves for obtaining it. (It doesn’t take much. It’s the simple things.)

There will also, maybe, be instructions and posters espousing the current social attitude towards the disposal of consumables. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Seems simple enough.

So, what is it that we are aware of precisely?

We are aware that manufacturing processes produce wastewater contaminated with chemical compounds, polymer chains, and alkali and heavy metals, that pollute waterways and the environment.

We are aware that the burning of fossil fuels is bad, with great, billowing clouds of pollution wafting into the air slowly choking the life out of us. (It’s not as though Svante Arrhenius didn’t warn us about the relationship between CO₂ and climate change. In 1896.)

We are aware that our land and seas are clogged with plastics, and life everywhere is choking on it. You probably think you’re pretty healthy, staying hydrated by purchasing a disposable bottle of water on a daily basis. Polyethylene Terephthalate can take 450 years to degrade but, we are aware that plastics never fully decompose. And now, microplastics are falling from the sky in the rain.

We are aware that overfishing and pollution is relentlessly killing off life in the oceans, and when they’re dead, we’re dead. 

We are aware that ongoing deforestation is a problem, raising the global CO₂ levels contributing to climate change and causing the extinction of life that has perhaps never even been seen, let alone classified taxonomically. All so we can grow soybeans for livestock food and biofuel, palm oil for cosmetics and biofuel, and big fat beef cattle for those 12oz steaks and fast-food burgers. And any useful timber is used to bring us the latest in fashionable goods, and biofuel.

We are aware that, with industrial agriculture, supermarkets and the diminishing of locally produced goods, the food we consume is bombarded with pesticides and wrapped in preservatives and plastic as it comes from further and further afield.

We are aware that food preservatives transform into carcinogens. We are aware that the herbicides that we use to clear large swathes of land, or even just to keep our homes and public open spaces free from those unsightly “weeds”, build up and leech into and contaminate the water table. We are well aware that the pesticides we use so enthusiastically, are no more discriminating in their targeting than any other “chemical weapon of mass destruction”. Now, since 2006 when the problem first started being reported, we’ve been bewilderedly scratching our heads wondering why all the bees are dying out.

(Really? Can’t figure that one out huh?)

And, of course, we are aware that the concept of the “paperless office” is definitely a good idea, yet we somehow still manage to end up using reams of A4 on a daily basis.

We could keep listing what we are aware of forever. The fact of the matter is, homo sapiens (that’s us by the way), is well aware that it is the progenitor of its own problems.

So, how did we come to such an impasse?